Category: Photo Business News & Forum

One of the many reservations photographers have to putting up any sort of official objection – that is, to file a lawsuit in court – is the cost and time associated with doing so. Further, their objections include the cost of hiring an attorney, and then paying them again, and again, and again. Then, there’s the reservation because, well, Continue reading "Take Action Now – Copyright Simplified"

For many a professional photographer, the Professional Photographers of America is a trusted resource for education, support,and representation on all matters that matter to photographers. There are several trade associations, among them the NPPA,ASMP, and APA, and the PP of A stands shoulder to shoulder with them in working hard to affect change around the country and within the industry.Each tends to focus on one area where photographers need help, but all are working hard when it comes to protecting copyright forprofessional photographers.A few weeks ago, the CEO Continue reading "PPA and Copyright – Trust a Champion"

There are plenty of ways to gag and bind your time, creativity, and intellectual property. The latest one, Binded (a rebranding of a company called Blockai) is a startup offering up worthless "certificates" - selling snake oil to the creative masses.

On their website they proffer "we give you a copyright certificate as proof which can help protect you against copyright infringement." Unfortunately, they should be saying "might" or "may", and even then, that's not true. In a March 14, 2016 TechCrunch interview (here), when the CEO is asked if there is any legal benefit to their Continue reading "Binded – Unwanted S&M For Artists & Creatives"

A common refrain by photographers who make excuses for not registering their work with the copyright office is that they’re not that valuable, or that no one would want to steal them.

On May 11th, in Baltimore Maryland, a jury awarded the copyright owner $900,000 in actual damages and $300,000 in statutory damages for 133 total infringements of 24 different images, of plants, in Under A Food Plant Company v. Exterior Design Inc. The case is BPG-15-871, before the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

Conde Nast has taken a page out of the Time Magazine playbook and their new contract outlines that you can pay a fee to be paid faster, according to the Fashionista blog here, who reports they have a copy of the latest contract.

In 2009, Photo Business News reported here about how Time Warner was doing the same thing. What is not clear, is what the Conde Nast payment schedule is like.

In 10 minutes, you get a remarkable insight into all the hard work that goes into covering the Olympics as a professional photographer. Produced by the International Olympic Committee, this video reveals just what goes into covering the Olympics - all the advance work, multiple cameras both hand-held and remotes, and logistics. The video is very matter-of-fact, not really glamorizing the still photographers' job, but also not revealing the back-breaking efforts, long hours, access changes, and commutes to and from the venues.

The Nikon KeyMission 360 holds great promise as a tool to create immersive visual experiences. In putting the camera through its' paces, I found that the limitation of the battery, at 1 hour and 10 minutes, created limitations when I needed to place the camera in a remote location where I could not trigger it from afar, or when I wanted to capture longer than the internal battery would allow. In order to capture a longer video, an external battery connected to the camera was needed.

The challenge occurs, when the door of the KeyMission 360 is opened, as it

Visual China Group (SHE:VCG), has seen a significant loss in the last month losing far more market value then the general malaise of the Shenzhen overall composite index. This is important because, as VCG goes, so goes Getty Images. The highly regarded Selling Stock report on the turnaround potential of Getty Images concludes "There is almost no chance that Getty will regain any market share in the Midstock or Premium space. I expect revenue overall will continue to decline. The only question is how much, how fast." (link here, 3/26/15.)"How fast" is becoming more clear now. Visual China Group's opening price on the Chinese stock market at ¥9.00 ($1.30USD) on February 3rd 2013 was met with a one-third loss by the close Continue reading "The Failure of Visual China Group"

Creative Commons is a well intentioned idea gone bad, and finally their existence will be put to the test, in a lawsuit brought that challenges the notion of what is "commercial" versus "noncommercial" use of an image.

Ars Technica reports, in "Creative Commons licenses under scrutiny—what does “noncommercial” mean?" (here, 9/18/16) that an educational company, Great Minds, is suing FedEx because their company (in the form of the former Kinkos that makes photo copies) is charging money for photocopies of this material. The basics are that "print shops, like FedEx, negotiate a license and pay a royalty to Great Minds if they wish to reproduce the Materials for commercial purposes—i.e., their own profit—at the request of their customers."

Getty Images today notified contributors that on June 8th, 2016 it filed a lawsuit against Walter A. Kowalczuk because they allege he "downloaded thousands of images without authorization from Getty Images and profited from those downloads. In addition, Getty Images believes that Mr. Kowalczuk was not acting alone, and the company is actively pursuing other possible infringers."

Getty Images has been the subject of many criticisms online for their aggressive handling of copyright infringement claims, and just two days ago Geekwire published "Getty Images rights claim against Seattle startup raises ‘phishing scam’ concerns", however, the article notes that the infringer (Aaron Bird) in this case "...will end up paying the settlement fee..."because, well, he infringed. Bird's concern centered around the question of a phishing scam and not whether or not he actually infringed on the work.

What camera slinging aspiring pro photographer wouldn't want to be a part of a "Photo Quest" these days? A "quest" conjures up Indiana Jones-esque expeditions for the perfect picture - explorers searching for just the right photo to satisfy the "photo gods of exposure." Who could be so ignorant or desperate? Apparently quite a few, like the natives worshipping a false sun god because of a solar eclipse. Some 840 clueless photographers submitted 6,000 images for the chance at winning the "great honor" of having their creative work product commercially exploited along with 50 others whose work was selected for a FOR PROFIT Lonely Planet book, according to MobileMarketingDaily - "500px Launches Photo Quests, Allows Brands To Crowdsource Original Content" (5/23/16).

Getty images is getting "up to $100 million" according to Reuters (here) from Visual China Group, which might seem like a lot, but, in review, is really not. In 2015, Bloomberg Business reported on Getty's cash situation, in "Getty Images is Running Tight on Cash" (2/25/15).

What was reported was that, in the last quarter of 2014, Getty "depleted a third of its cash during the last three months of 2014, leaving it with $27 million...". That meant that Getty had $41M, or is burning through about $4.5Million a month. This may well not

Corbis wasted no time detailing to photographers how the transition from being a Corbis photographer to a Getty Images photographer will take place, in an email sent out with a FAQ. While the FAQ went into great detail. What was abundantly clear was that Corbis will no longer exist in short order.

Yesterday, Photo Business News detailed the sale of Corbis to Visual China Group (SHENZEN: 000681) subsidiary Unity Glory as well as the same-day announcement of what clearly looks like an end-run around anti-trust laws by Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) when they announced the worldwide exclusive arrangement with Getty Images.

A message yesterday was sent from Jeff Enlow (LinkedIn: Jeff Enlow) to contributors which makes it clear that Getty is getting all (or, to be more specific, everything they want and think is of value) from Corbis. In it, Enlow wrote:

As a professional photographer, one of the worst things you can do is be a freelancer. That is, just as you should banish the phrase "day rate" from your lexicon, so too should you banish the word "freelance" from the word set you use to describe yourself.

Words not only have meanings, they insinuate something about whomever they describe. An entire chapter on language was included in the book MORE Best Business Practices for Photographers, titled "A Linguistically Accurate Lexicon", for that very reason.

Consider the characterization of a person of the female gender. The word "girl", "woman", "lady", "chick, "madam", and "doll", all carry similar sentiments to "boy", "man", "gentleman", "dude", "sir", and "guy" for a person of the male gender. The disparity between saying "that boy over there" versus "that young man over there" is not lost on the recipient of that characterization, nor is "please Continue reading "Why You Should Not Be A Freelance Photographer"

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